Planning to rebuild muscle and add more

D

Day3cat

Explorer
Joined
Jun 10, 2026
Messages
24
Reaction score
0
Location
Cleveland, ohio
About 5 months on Tirz. Down 27 lbs, with another 10 I want gone. BUT!!!! Muscle loss has definitely happened 😡. For 30+ years I have lifted heavy 5 days/wk. (Yes, I am old. 50+ club) My lifting has suffered — my max is lower than before Tirz. So, to build muscle I need to cycle some peps. Recommendations please.
 
Honestly, the majority of peptides do not build muscle. Insulin, maybe (does that even count as a biologic?).

Beyond that, you're clearly experienced and have trained long enough that you already know the real solution: eating and sleeping. (And naturally AAS once all of that is in order.)

That said, you might experiment with the anti-inflammatory recovery compounds - BPC-157/TB-4/TB-500/KPV/GHK-Cu are the primary options. Those can improve your recovery, which makes your training and sleep far more productive.
 
Has anyone past a certain age given BPC-157/TB-4/TB-500/KPV/GHK-Cu a go? I want results, though steroids and the like are off the table for me..
 
I'm not at that age yet. When it comes to peptides, the only real choices are HGH or secretagogues.

My suggestion: raise calories for a while to regain strength, and once you've maintained that strength for at least 4 weeks, then resume cutting. That's the slow route, but it spares your ego. Alternatively, just push on and accept it as the price of a bigger cut, hoping to rebuild afterward.
 
IGF-1 LR3 and Follistatin 344 are also options.

That said, I'd steer clear of them, because... anabolics come with a pretty nasty catch (through IGF and mTOR stimulation); namely what they do to cardiac and aortic tissue. When compounds push IGF-1 and GH levels up substantially, particularly at supraphysiological doses, they're tied to aortic dilation and structural weakening, plus cardiac hypertrophy. Given where we are post-covid (that is, according to the science, covid infection led to enlarged aortas), sticking with normal physiological levels at your age may be the smarter call.

Mind you, Follistatin doesn't act via the GH/IGF1 axis, so it could be a path forward.
 
Day3cat said:

About 5 months on Tirz. Down 27 lbs, with another 10 I want gone. BUT!!!! Muscle loss has definitely happened 😡. For 30+ years I have lifted heavy 5 days/wk. (Yes, I am old. 50+ club) My lifting has suffered — my max is lower than before Tirz. So, to build muscle I need to cycle some peps. Recommendations please.
Click to expand...
Do you happen to be using TRT? For me, it made a huge difference. I've dropped 30lbs of fat, my workouts have gotten better, and I'm now stronger than I was at the beginning. I'm also eating more, which surprisingly helped me shed even more fat. I've been on triz and trt since November.
 
How much protein are you actually getting in? Losing muscle while training heavy with strength work seems hard to picture, provided nutrition is dialled in, even when you are in a calorie deficit.
 
staffn1 said:

How much protein are you actually getting in? Losing muscle while training heavy with strength work seems hard to picture, provided nutrition is dialled in, even when you are in a calorie deficit.
Click to expand...
I won't make any guesses about where you're at fitness-wise, but for someone carrying a lot more muscle and strength than your typical gym member, losses can come fast even when trt and hgh are in the mix.

Speaking from my own experience: I recently watched a big chunk of strength and muscle disappear because I was mountain biking way too much during an experimental tren run. Weather and my schedule lined up so I could ride trails every other day for a full month. Despite heavy lifting, protein, 200mg test, 210mg tren, 4iu hgh, I still dropped size and strength.

By the way, the reason I wanted to try tren was to check out the mental sides everyone goes on about. I was single and in between jobs, so I figured it was the ideal window to give it a test drive.
 
A smaller max lift isn't proof that muscle has gone missing. With intake down and a deficit running, the drive you get when going for a max will naturally sit lower.

Maxing out never struck me as useful in the first place — nobody in an office needs it, nor on an oil rig for that matter. That said, if building muscle is the whole focus, move to reta plus TRT (assuming the fertility cost is acceptable). My honest read is that reta holds muscle better than tirz, though I've never run tirz, so there's a real chance I'm 100% off base and biased.
 
gusterbuster said:

staffn1 said:

How much protein are you actually getting in? Losing muscle while training heavy with strength work seems hard to picture, provided nutrition is dialled in, even when you are in a calorie deficit.
Click to expand...
I won't make any guesses about where you're at fitness-wise, but for someone carrying a lot more muscle and strength than your typical gym member, losses can come fast even when trt and hgh are in the mix.

Speaking from my own experience: I recently watched a big chunk of strength and muscle disappear because I was mountain biking way too much during an experimental tren run. Weather and my schedule lined up so I could ride trails every other day for a full month. Despite heavy lifting, protein, 200mg test, 210mg tren, 4iu hgh, I still dropped size and strength.

By the way, the reason I wanted to try tren was to check out the mental sides everyone goes on about. I was single and in between jobs, so I figured it was the ideal window to give it a test drive.
Click to expand...

A lot of people run tren during aggressive cuts. It’s pretty effective for holding onto muscle. So if you drop a lot of muscle while on tren, that just proves muscle loss can happen on any cut. Good thing the mental sides didn’t land you in Thailand.
 
Gt3294a said:

gusterbuster said:

staffn1 said:

How much protein are you actually getting in? Losing muscle while training heavy with strength work seems hard to picture, provided nutrition is dialled in, even when you are in a calorie deficit.
Click to expand...
I won't make any guesses about where you're at fitness-wise, but for someone carrying a lot more muscle and strength than your typical gym member, losses can come fast even when trt and hgh are in the mix.

Speaking from my own experience: I recently watched a big chunk of strength and muscle disappear because I was mountain biking way too much during an experimental tren run. Weather and my schedule lined up so I could ride trails every other day for a full month. Despite heavy lifting, protein, 200mg test, 210mg tren, 4iu hgh, I still dropped size and strength.

By the way, the reason I wanted to try tren was to check out the mental sides everyone goes on about. I was single and in between jobs, so I figured it was the ideal window to give it a test drive.
Click to expand...

A lot of people run tren during aggressive cuts. It’s pretty effective for holding onto muscle. So if you drop a lot of muscle while on tren, that just proves muscle loss can happen on any cut. Good thing the mental sides didn’t land you in Thailand.
Click to expand...
Haha, I'm not going after lady boys. At bigger doses maybe, but going any higher wrecked my sleep too badly. The deficit was supposed to be 500-700 cal, yet tren sped my metabolism up so much that I dropped far more weight than I had intended.
 
Back
Top